President Donald Trump is hosting a crypto dinner tomorrow for the top 220 holders of his official meme coin, leading to considerable political outrage from a growing group of critics.
Four U.S. lawmakers—along with representatives of watchdog groups Public Citizen, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, and End Citizens United—plan to hold a press conference on Thursday to demand a full release of dinner attendees’ names and “what favors they’re getting.” Prior, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) had demanded a probe into the event, citing risks of foreign influence given the pseudonymous nature of crypto transactions.
While no one yet knows the full list of attendees for Thursday’s event, we do know some of them. From a Chinese-born crypto billionaire to a celebrity meme coin creator and a former NBA star, the crypto gala promises to have a diverse audience.
In order to qualify for the dinner with the president, holders of Trump’s meme coin, which trades as TRUMP, were required to register via the GetTrumpMemes official website by providing their full legal name, an email address, phone number, and the Solana wallet that held the tokens.
Placements were calculated using a time-weighted average of TRUMP holdings between April 23 and May 12, with the top 220 on the leaderboard being invited to the gala. Plus, the top 25 holders were also invited to an “ultra-exclusive private VIP reception.”
So, who made the cut?
Justin Sun
The top holder of the TRUMP meme coin is Chinese-born billionaire Justin Sun, the controversial founder of the Tron blockchain, prime minister of Liberland, and large investor in the Trump-tied World Liberty Financial project.
A cryptocurrency wallet identified by blockchain analysis firm Arkham as belonging to crypto exchange HTX, a company that Sun owns, started to climb the leaderboard shortly after the gala announcement. The wallet, nicknamed “Sun” on the leaderboard, was later revealed to be controlled by the crypto billionaire, and the Kittitian national has since gloated about it on social media.
Sun added $435,800 to his TRUMP holdings in the 28 days following the gala announcement in April, according to data from Solana blockchain explorer SolScan, and it now holds $22.04 million worth of the meme coin.
Sun landed in the United States on Monday and has been on a publicity tour ever since—visiting a Worldcoin store, a Vast space station, as well as a SpaceX station.
MemeCore
MemeCore, a layer-1 blockchain built around memes, started to buy up TRUMP tokens the day after the dinner was announced. Now less than a month later, the wallet nicknamed MeCo holds $20.32 million worth of TRUMP and is the second largest holder.
The pseudonymous MemeCore co-founder “Ice” will be attending on behalf of the project.
It appears that MemeCore was able to achieve its holdings via its “Operation SUN of a B**ch” campaign, as it pushed to surpass Sun for the top spot on the leaderboard—a pursuit that ultimately failed.
The campaign asked users to send TRUMP tokens to its wallet in exchange for extra TRUMP tokens at a minimum annual percentage yield of 4,682. It’s worth noting, though, the project claims to have refunded participants just 19 days later, which would mean a maximum return on investment of 103. Some users claim to have received the airdrop, with the tokens coming from a different wallet.
“Trump is a very iconic meme character,” MemeCore chief business development officer Cherry Hsu told The Washington Post. She told the Post that her team has joked they hope the dinner includes Big Mac burgers from McDonalds, a reference to Trump’s deep love for the fast-food chain—even having a mobile McDonald’s follow him during his Middle East Tour.
EV
Coming in at 12th on the TRUMP leaderboard is a wallet with the username “EV.” Those familiar with the meme coin trenches will recognize it as belonging to the celebrity coin launcher EV, also known as “HardSnipe,” who has publicly claimed he owns it.
The wallet received just shy of $3 million worth of TRUMP coins from a Binance wallet the day of the announcement. It then shifted the total amount back to Binance after May 12, once the leaderboard calculations had been finalized.
EV has claimed to be behind tokens connected to music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, rapper Busta Rhymes, and DaBaby. The self-proclaimed multi-millionaire was recently called out by influencer Mario Nawfal, who claims EV convinced his team to post about a project that was supposedly linked to the influencer Adin Ross when, in fact, he wasn’t.
The celebrity meme coin promoter also claims to have had inside info regarding the dinner announcement and profited $65,573 on a leveraged trade.
Though EV has publicly stated the wallet is his, blockchain investigation firm Bubblemaps could not find any connection between the wallet and his previous token launches. This may be due to EV’s regular use of centralized exchanges, which helps mask such connections, Bubblemaps told Decrypt.
EV declined Decrypt’s request for comment because we wouldn‘t deny the Holocaust was real. (Seriously.)
Ogle
Pseudonymous advisor to Trump’s World Liberty Financial and founder of the Glue network, Ogle, told Decrypt that he is “likely” to attend the event. Ogle ranks 22nd on the leaderboard, with his wallet currently holding $3.59 million worth of TRUMP.
Ogle told The Washington Post that he intends to wear a mask to the event to maintain anonymity. But they will remove the mask once the event starts because there are no cameras or journalists allowed. Ogle also announced that Glue will be holding a free dinner the day before the event, open to holders of a number of tokens.
Lamar Odom
Two-time NBA champion Lamar Odom announced via Instagram that he will be attending the dinner, and will be representing his yet-to-launch ODOM meme coin—a project aiming to combat drug abuse.
Similar to MemeCore, it appears that the ODOM project asked users to send TRUMP tokens to its wallet in exchange for a TRUMP refund and future ODOM airdrop after the event. This helped the wallet climb to the 51st spot on the leaderboard with $2.09 million worth of TRUMP, at the time of writing, according to SolScan.
That said, former NFL player Terrell Owens advised him via an Instagram comment not to attend. “Bro! Don’t do it,” he said. “Ask yourself, respectfully, would Kobe do something like this?
Vincent Liu
Kronos Research, a market making, trading, and venture capital firm, has also ranked on the leaderboard and will be sending its CIO Vincent Liu.
The company’s total holdings of TRUMP is worth six figures, Liu told Decrypt, but it does not intend to sell after the dinner. Instead, the firm will hold onto the tokens as a market maker for exchanges and will be seeking out arbitrage opportunities.
Liu told Decrypt he is excited to hear President Trump speak about his crypto vision at the event and is keen to network with attendees.
Vincent Deriu
A senior analyst for accounting firm Ernst & Young claims that he is heading to the TRUMP gala dinner, on behalf of himself rather than his employer. Vincent Deriu told Decrypt that he isn’t hoping for anything in particular from the event.
The 27-year-old New Yorker told The Wall Street Journal that he voted for President Trump, often wears Trump watches, and believes the meme coin event is a democratic way to allow access to the president.
Kain Warwick
Kain Warwick, founder of “crypto everything app” Infinex and derivatives protocol Synthetix, confirmed to Decrypt that he will be attending the dinner. He will be there on behalf of himself rather than as a representative for one of his companies.
Warwick told The New York Times that he hopes to have a conversation with President Trump or his son Eric Trump. “That’s something that I wouldn’t have expected I would have the opportunity to be even in the position to do,” he said.
Morten Christensen
Founder of AirdropAlert Morten Christensen told Bloomberg that he will be attending the dinner with four friends, claiming that he only spent $1,200 to earn an invite. That’s because the group bought a bulk of TRUMP tokens on the spot market and then shorted the exact same amount, effectively cancelling out any profits or losses each position made.
Christensen claimed in a May 15 X post to be fully out of his TRUMP position, just days after the leaderboard was calculated.
ZielonoMi
Pseudonymous Polish influencer ZielonoMi also claimed to be attending the dinner via a post on X, formerly Twitter, asking for suggestions on what to ask Trump. One X user replied, “Ask who pays the bill.” ZielonoMi responded: “We’re supposed to pay the bill.”
ZielonoMi claims to have hedged his TRUMP position but did not expand on what he meant by that. This may be a reference to deploying a similar strategy to Christensen.
Others
It is near impossible to track down the entire list of 220 dinner attendees, thanks to the pseudonymity of blockchain networks. That said, there are a slew of people on social media who claim to be headed to the private event.
The 25-year-old sports fan and car enthusiast Nicholas Pinto replied to Justin Sun and Morten Christensen on X to tell them he’s excited to see them at the dinner. Pinto appears to have been a child prodigy entrepreneur, being featured in Fox Business for making $100,000 at 13-years-old by “reinventing the scooter wheel.” Pinto told Decrypt he was already a holder of a “good amount” of TRUMP but doubled his holdings in an attempt to hit the top 25. Ultimately, he fell short of that goal, but still snagged a spot on the leaderboard.
Other possible attendees include pseudonymous BitMart founder Sheldon, Axie Infinity and Ronin co-founder Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin, pseudonymous NFT collector StrongHands, Bored Ape Yacht Club member Miner, leader of Ape Society an alpha Telegram chat Corey, and pseudonymous founder of AlphaCollabs PizzaDough701.
Even if all of the listed people are indeed attending the event, it’s still less than 20 of the 220 who will be at the private dinner. It may be no surprise, then, that there is increasing pressure on President Trump to disclose the full guest list as fears of corruption and foreign influence grow louder.
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